One and a half rhinoceroses: A defence of John Peel against the Daily Mail (and others)

This was, lest we forget, a young man from Liverpool who had been cloistered in an all-male English public school, done his National Service, and then been sent by his father to a USA in the throes of Beatlemania. This was not a cigar-chomping predatory rapist.

No man has had an influence on my life more than John Peel.

This doesn't make him a god. As desperately sad as I would be if it became clear he was guilty of something hideous I'd accept it.

However, his marriage seems to be the only 'evidence' to 'wrongdoing'. As Colin B Morton writes today, the only noise on this has come from Julie Burchill - who has spent decades writing anti-Peel articles - she has always 'loathed' him, and has never missed an opportunity to infer something that no-one else has.

UPDATE OCT 12
Someone else has now. Not good, but consensual rather than predatory. Don't want to give him a pass just because of who he was, but this isn't comparable to Savile at all.

Photo by mutyakeishasiobhan • Instagram

Ahem.

Mad Men - The 8-bit YouTube Game

Love this, especially the music. My favourite couple of quotes:

I'm going to keep sleeping with lots of women, get drunk, and be a bad father and friend…yet somehow, I'll still be one of the most beloved characters on television.

Now I gotta go and sleep with Joan and Jane. I'm old and gray but I get the hottest tail on the show.

Season 5 starts this week. Can't wait.

Yes, It Says 'Subscribed'

I live perpetually in 1991.

'These Are The Days Of My Life'

There's a touching 40-something / mid-life crisis piece by Miranda Sawyer in today's Observer.

Apologies for spoiler of quoting her concluding paragraph, but it's too lovely to ignore:

Midlife or not, in the end, or in the middle, these are the days of my life. These are the days of your life. And the thing to do – is live them.

Miranda was my favourite music journalist in the 90's. Her quality remains high.

A Greasily Translucent Cardboard Bucket

Go to http://www.asseenonthetv.co.uk/kfc for more information

An advert for fried chicken. That's what it is.

I was going to moan about it. KFC using a cover of an Embrace song and trying to make their product somehow classy.  

I was going to quote Merlin Mann:

....the same company that first made American adults like your grandparents feel entirely comfortable feeding their family out of a greasily translucent cardboard bucket.

I was going to link to his excellent post from last year when KFC introduced this brown thing where the chicken somehow was the bun, and recall his tweet:

However, I've since read that despite my belief that they quietly split up 5 years ago, Embrace have a new album in the works. I love Embrace.

Things don't seem so bad now. I fancy a Zinger and Hot Wings.